CHAPTER ONE: The Chase Is On
I found two bodies in one week. This was unusual, as my life was, for the most part, quite routine, and I liked it that way. Maybe I was overdue for a shake-up.
The corpse was my next-door neighbor Harris Sloan.
The previous week I’d found the abandoned nest of a Canada goose. A small fox had glanced my way, and fearlessly continued to eat the goose’s eggs, but there was no trace of the goose. I’d screamed at the fox, and he had skulked away. The gander, whose plaintive honking had summoned me to the pond, was paddling about, his call to his mate unanswered. I almost cried at the pitiable sound of his loneliness, but neighbors were looking on, and I don’t cry in front of others. It’s both a strength and a weakness.
The goose was on my mind as I went over to start the process of selling Harris’s house. I’d avoided him because I suspected he might have done something to the goose, and I loved the geese and the liveliness they added to the pond; however; time was wasting. I work part time as a real estate agent to supplement my income as a forensic sketch artist, and I needed the income from this sale.
I took photos of the exterior and then knocked on the side door. Not known for my patience, when Harris didn’t come immediately, I opened the door, walked into the kitchen and called out his name. No answer.
I entered the dining room. I thought surely my mind was playing tricks on me. Harris was slumped over his kitchen table with a pool of blood under his head. Feathers from a Canada goose were strewn gaily around the macabre scene. I swear I almost fainted. Instead I started trembling violently. I don’t know why, but I touched the blood. Maybe I thought it would be fake, rubber blood or something like that, and he would jump up. Maybe I hoped I was hallucinating. But no, Harris was clearly dead, and the blood was still wet. Was it fresh? Was the murderer still here? With those thoughts, I rushed home.
Still shaking, I called 911. Then I called Mark, my fiancé, and got his voice mail. I left a message for him to call me asap.
Homer was in my lap and we were sitting on my second-hand couch when I heard sirens growing louder and saw the approaching blue lights. Homer purred as I stroked his black fur, and I wondered if I would ever again feel as contented as him. The flashing lights stopped in front of my house and next door at Harris’s. I stepped out front and was approached by two officers, one male and one female, wearing bullet-proof vests and holding firearms to their sides.
"Are you Anna Tomkins?" the woman asked.
Too nervous to speak, I nodded.
"Is anyone still in the house?"
I shook my head.
"May we go inside?"
I nodded again and, as I turned to enter my house, I saw the large white crime scene mobile unit pull in front of Harris’s house. I thought how specialists would cover their clothes and hair with the white paper jumpsuits I knew so well and put on booties and gloves. They would tape off the exterior perimeter first. Some would search for footprints and other evidence outside. Others would photograph the rooms, collect items and place them in baggies marked with date, time and location. Still others would dust surfaces for fingerprints. I’d often been called to crime scenes to do sketches of suspects, while the memory was still fresh in witnesses’ minds.
I never planned to be a forensic sketch artist. When I was an undergraduate studying art, I dreamed of working in a museum, like the Louvre or the Met, or at a world-famous art gallery. Perhaps have exhibits of my own art displayed someday. I had visions of my life in New York or Paris, maybe even L.A. It’s funny how life turns out. A truism I hadn’t expected to apply to my own life. I had planned for my future to be nothing less than spectacular. Yet here I was, still in Athens where I had gone to college. My wings had been clipped my last year as an undergraduate, and I had yet to recover.
Homer had heard all the commotion and when he saw two strangers come in the front door, he fled to safety under my bed. He was a loving cat to me, shadowed my every movement and seized any opportunity to sit squeezed next to me or on my lap to knead my thighs with his claws. With anyone else, even my close friends Grace and Bess, he sought the security of my room, either under my bed or hidden among the clothes in my closet. I let him be.
I sat on the couch again. Abandoned by Homer, I took hold of a pillow with a needlepoint inscription reading "Home is Where the Heart Is" and held it tightly to my chest. I began to sweat and could scarcely breathe. My hands trembled. The air around me became thick and watery. I was hyperventilating and felt I was on the verge of drowning.
Then out of the haze someone spoke to me.
"Are you all right?" asked a policewoman.
I took a deep breath and nodded. I was back in the present.
The officers told me their names and showed me their badges, but I don’t recall their names and doubt I’d recognize them if I were ever to meet them again. They had me tell how I’d found Harris for the first of many times.
An EMS tech came in and interrupted to check me out, taking my temperature, pulse and blood pressure. She asked me a series of questions and turned to the officers who were waiting for her verdict.
"She should be OK for questioning, but keep it short for tonight, all right?"
The police asked if I’d accompany them to the station. Since I couldn’t think of any reason why I couldn’t, I nodded. Even though I wasn’t in shock, I was definitely having what I’d call an out-of-body experience. I wasn’t floating above looking down on the scene or anything like that, but nothing around me seemed real. I regarded the actions taking place around me as though I was an observer rather than a participant.
That’s how I’d come to be sitting in a small, drab room in the police station.
#
CHAPTER TWO: Anna Skirts the Truth
On one wall was a large poster promoting seat belt use: Click It or Ticket. A clock. A No Smoking sign. Escorted here by the officer, I’d been left alone for what seemed like hours. I hate sitting still. Increasingly agitated, I fidgeted with the leather strap of my bag and then remembered my cell phone. Surprisingly no signs were posted banning cells. I told Siri to call Grace and she did.
"You won’t believe where I am right now," I whispered into the phone.
"So, tell me, Anna."
"Try to guess."
The part of my personality that loves to delve into puzzles and that often causes my family and friends to tag me as nosy, made me believe that others wanted to solve, too, rather than be told the answer.
"I don’t have time for this!" Grace actually raised her voice, and I jumped. "I’m at the hospital. I’m hanging up."
"No, wait! I’m at the police station!" I said.
"Oh my God! Are you OK? What’s happened?"
"I’m all right but listen. I went next door to get Harris’s house ready to list, and there he was, dead. Since I discovered the body, I’ve got to be interviewed," I blurted out. "I guess I’m the only witness, even though I didn’t really see anything, except his body. Can you believe it?"
A pause seemed to go on forever until Grace said, "Harris is dead? "
Another long pause. I began to wonder why she wasn’t shocked or upset when she said, "I guess we do need to talk. Come for dinner tonight."
Grace hung up, and I was left wondering what I could tell the police. I was also getting hungry and wondered if any snack machines were close by. I always get hungry when I have nothing to keep my brain busy. I rooted around in my purse to see if there were remnants of a previous snack but nothing.
About that time, the same officer returned. She had already interviewed me and taken my fingerprints for elimination purposes.
"Come back at noon tomorrow. Don’t talk about the murder with anyone. GBI is sending an agent to investigate." She took out a business card, wrote on the back, "Special Agent Milledge and handed it to me.
I nodded in agreement, as I quickly crossed my fingers. I put the card in my bag and left.
Truth was, I thought the murder was bizarre. What could Harris have done that could have caused someone to slash his throat. As D.B. Russell says frequently on CSI, this was no heat-of-the-moment act--there was no bloody knife in the kitchen. The killer must have brought his own. Any way you sliced it, it was overkill.
By the time I arrived home I was too drained to take Grace up on her invitation for dinner. Mark was still out. I was too tired even to talk on the phone. I sent Grace a quick text:
Today 7:14 PM
Just got home. Too tired to come over. Let’s talk tomorrow.
Sorry. Till tomorrow.
Exhausted from the sitting, the waiting, and the lack of food, I put together a chicken salad sandwich, grabbed some Bugles, a Diet Coke, and my laptop, and plopped on the couch to watch the news on-line. I scrolled down, looking for my neighbor’s house to appear - but nothing!
Hard to believe that such a horrific murder was not even mentioned.
Stepping out on my back deck, I saw that the Athens Forensic Unit had already cordoned off Harris’s house with bright yellow crime scene tape. The technicians were collecting any evidence the killer might have left behind. I imagined one of the detectives was doing the crime scene sketch.
Mark wasn’t home by 11:30. He hadn’t returned my call and still didn’t answer his cell. I wasn’t worried because it was like him not to tell me what he was doing. Mark and I have been living together for a year and a half now. He is on the road as a sales rep for a drug company eighty per cent of the time but was home that week. As I said, I’m a real estate agent and work odd hours, including many on the weekend. Mark seems to like it that way, saying he gets a lot of work done when I’m not in his hair. Personally, I’d like more us time although I must admit I like my alone time, too. I just wish he could include me on some of these sales trips he takes. Maybe he was at poker. Thinking he’d be home soon, I went to bed.
I woke once startled by a nightmare. I was making a sketch of the murder, but adding flowers, a bowl of grapes and pears--flies lighting on Harris’s bloodied scalp, and everywhere feathers, dripping blood. The drawing was like one of the seventeenth century Dutch paintings of beautiful flowers and fruit, but with bugs crawling on the rotting remains of a hare or with a skull peeking out from the flowers. I sensed someone was with me in Harris’s house and wanted to turn around but couldn’t. A door slammed in my dream, and I woke up.
That was the moment I came to believe I hadn’t been alone in the house when I found Harris. I reached out for Mark, but he still wasn’t there. Now I was alarmed. If the murderer saw me, he could have waited to follow me home. I got up, checked and double checked to make sure that all the doors and windows were locked. Then I locked my bedroom door and went back bed. I pulled the covers tight around my neck.
#
Chapter Three: Anna Is Outfoxed
The rain was doing its proverbial cats-and-dogs number, and the neighborhood was silent except for the downpour tapping on roofs and skylights, splashing in the pond and in puddles on the road. I threw on my robe and went out to the great room. Homer was yowling for his breakfast.
Mark had apparently slept on the couch and already left so I sent him a text asking to meet for dinner. I said that I had something important to tell him. I did not elaborate because I wanted to see his reaction. I fed Homer, Keurig’d a mug of coffee and carried it back to my room. In between sips I pulled on a pair of jeans and a lavender sweater. I splashed water on my face, ran a brush through my hair and deemed myself ready enough to for the police station.
Donning my yellow slicker, I grabbed my keys and the mug of coffee, still hot, and dashed through the rain to my trusty 2002 Toyota. My next house will have a garage, I thought. I turned the key in the ignition and was grateful that the engine started right up. I drank the remaining coffee and backed out.
WUGA was having one of its perennial fundraisers so I switched to Bulldog 93.3 for a steady mix of classic and contemporary rock. Music labeled alternative was mainstream here. For more obscure music I went to YouTube. Of course, my main musical squeeze has always been Aretha, the Queen of Soul; she’d hooked me with "A Change is Gonna Come" and reeled me in with "Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream."The Atlanta stations where I could listen to her had hit-or-miss reception so, to hear Aretha, I relied on my free Spotify at home. I fastened the seatbelt and headed to the downtown Athens Jittery Joe. The rain was even heavier so of course the traffic went even faster; I attributed this devil-may-care attitude of Athens drivers to the belief held by the young that they will live forever. I had seen enough to know that this isn’t true. As a red light turned green the car behind me honked when I didn’t move immediately. I thought of slowing down in a passive-aggressive way but my fear that every other driver was carrying stopped me. Not wanting to be a road rage statistic, I floored it. I reached downtown soon enough.
Parking in front of Jittery Joe’s was easy, so I did a fairly decent job of parking, bustled in and set my belongings on a window table. At the counter I ordered my usual: a latte and a croissant. Once settled, I opened my laptop and connected to the town WiFi. Still no report of the murder on the internet. I was one of the first to arrive, as usual. Soon the other early birds began to claim their customary spots, including a guy who looked like Brad Pitt. I think he worked construction and counting on seeing him on rainy days made getting up and out of the house a whole lot easier. There came the person I was looking for. I waved to Velma, the resident shrink, to signal her over. After my nightmare, it was safe to say I was having major doubts about getting involved any more than I already was.
Velma was a town VIP. Easily recognized by the dark ponytail and signature motorcycle jacket, she provided brief on-the-spot check-ins for many of the town’s homeless...keeping them out of jail and the emergency room for the most part. Her paying clients included university deans and, the landed gentry, i.e., those who had made their fortunes selling off farm lands to UGA and new housing developments, and wealthy retirees who came here because of the weather or football. We had become friends through the Athens Chamber of Commerce meetings.
"Morning, Anna. What’s up?" Velma pulled out a chair and sat down.
I wasn’t sure what to say. The officer had cautioned me not to discuss the case with anyone, but Velma Dewitt was a doctor and, if you couldn’t trust a psychiatrist to keep a secret, who could you trust? Of course, she wasn’t my shrink; when I was at UGA, I’d used a psychiatrist at Student Health when I was attacked. However, I’d come to like and trust Velma the more I got to know her and, given the way I was feeling, thought she might be in the very near future.
"Can you keep a secret?" She raised her eyebrows and laughed. The she saw my furrowed brow and realized I wasn’t kidding around. She scowled and said, "It depends. Does it involve a threat to your life or to anyone else? If it does, I’m required to report it."
My nightmare popped back into my mind. I definitely feared the unknown person who might or might not have been in the house when I discovered Harris’s corpse. Was I in danger of being murdered? Well, Harris had been killed, hadn’t he? If the killer had still been in the house and thought I might have seen him, it was logical to think he’d want me out of the picture. Velma was very intuitive, and if I told her more, most likely she would feel compelled to report it, real threat or not. At that time, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to mention it to the police. After all my fears were just based on a feeling after a dream, no matter how sure I was. Should I tell her the truth or a lie?
I lied. "No, no threat. Just a bad dream." I squirmed.
"In fact, I’d feel silly telling you about it now."
"Well, you know where I am." Velma said matter-of-factly and moved on. She was not one to waste words or time, and I was left with my unresolved fears.
I’ve been called a born worrier, so my thoughts can easily dive to a place where bad is not only possible, but probable. At that moment I was contemplating Witness Protection and wondering who could go with me to some dry and dusty, but trendy, Arizona town. Would selling real estate there be too dangerous, make me too easily found by--whoa, Nellie! I remembered that I actually hadn’t seen anything that might remotely lead to the killer. I’d just happened to find Harris.
My anxiety had caused me to get out too early so I pulled out a paperback by Karin Slaughter and made myself comfortable. I was drawn to thrillers the way young boys are drawn to fireworks, and those books were almost as dangerous for me as firecrackers and bottle rockets were for the youths. I didn’t risk losing an eye or finger, rather the loose grip I had on sanity. The plots often caused me to recall the night I was assaulted on campus but, lacked a Will Trent to rescue me.
I refocused on my surroundings. Brad was gone, and Velma was in the middle of a pro bono therapy session. It was almost noon, so I couldn’t see procrastinating any more. Even the rain had slacked off, so there went that excuse. I took out the card I’d been given the night before and turned it over. Milledge. Probably a native Georgian. I continued to think creatively about him as I headed to the police station. I hoped he’d look and act like Will Trent’s cousin.
No such luck. Special Agent Milledge was about 20 or 30 years older than me. He wouldn’t be unattractive, I supposed, to a woman his own age, but older men weren’t my cup of tea. He did have kind eyes and the kind of Southern accent that made me feel right at home. By the time he he’d fetched me a cup of coffee, I was ready to be compliant.
He took a chair and pulled out a folder and some reading glasses. He stirred his coffee slowly and studied me over the glasses perched on his nose. I was getting nervous.
"How’d you sleep?" he asked.
"Well enough, sir" I said. I still hadn’t decided whether to tell him about my dream and that I thought the murderer might know who I was, or to lie. Of course, I opted to lie. It had worked with Velma. I was on a roll. My underarms were getting damp.
"Please call me Travis." I guess he was trying to put me at ease. "The report says that last night you seemed pretty unshaken for someone who just found a dead body." He dumped another pack of sugar in his coffee and stirred it again. "You usually that cool?"
Now I was sweating bullets. "I would have to say no, sir--Travis." I quickly shut my mouth, afraid saying any more would cause a new outpouring of sweat. He said nothing as well.
"Tell me about yourself." He leaned back in his chair.
"About me?" I asked. "Don’t you want to ask about Harris?"
"Were you friends with him?"
"Well, he was my next-door neighbor so yeah," I mumbled. "But no closer than I am to my other neighbors."
I looked at my fingernails.
"Harris kept to himself. He was quiet, a good neighbor."
"Why did you go to the house that afternoon?" he said.
Travis’s charisma was fading fast in my book. As a rule, once I begin, shutting me up is hard to do, but all I wanted to do then was to say what I saw and go home.
"I’m a real estate agent, and Harris had asked me to list his house, so I was going to go over the paperwork with him, measure, and take a few photos." I hoped he would be satisfied with these details and relaxed into my chair. "I wanted to start thinking about how to stage it to get a good price, especially since this sale would affect the value of my house."
"Did you take any photos of the body?" he said.
I hoped that I looked at him as if he was crazy. "Of course not. Do you think I’m stupid? I just got out of there as fast as I could."
Travis laughed. The charisma was back.
"No, I don’t--think you’re stupid," he said and left it at that. He rose. "More coffee?"
"Sure," I said, thinking that would give me time to think everything over. My gut feeling was that I should tell him that I believed someone had been in the house with me, but I was still undecided when, cups in hand, he returned from the counter.
"Here you go." Handing me my coffee, he sat down and leaned back. He drank some coffee. I fidgeted. He stared.
Travis clearly was a man of few words, while I am a woman of many. If there’s a void, I rush in to fill it. Silence makes me uncomfortable. The longer we sat there without talking, the more anxious I became. I was like a pot of rice about to boil over. My mind was racing and I was dying to tell all so he could reassure me. But more than that I wanted to be uninvolved, to un-see what I’d seen.
He finally said, "You know, I read the interview you gave the sergeant last night, and I have the feeling that you were holding something back."
"Well, I guess so." I fidgeted and looked at the clock. Time was up. "But it’s nothing really. Only a feeling."
I won’t repeat all the gory details for you, but eventually I told him about finding the body, the fact that the blood was very fresh and the dream that had me spooked. I ended with, "When I woke up, I just felt sure I hadn’t been alone there. I think the murderer was watching me."
Nodding he asked, "So why didn’t you want to tell me? Most people would’ve."
"I dunno," I mumbled.
I didn’t want to tell him that I was afraid I would become a target, and I certainly didn’t want him to know what a paranoid and frightened person I’d become; however, he seemed to read my mind.
" You know you’re already involved," he said. "Anything else you don’t want to tell me?"
"What else could there be?" I said and then remembered and added, "I did take a few pictures of the house before I went inside, but that--"
"--could be important," he interrupted. "Can I have the camera?"
"They’re on my cell," I said. "I need my phone to work."
"Let’s look at those photos right now." He reached for my phone.
I unlocked it and opened the camera. Finding yesterday’s pictures, I handed it over.
Swiping quickly through the series, he pinched out to enlarge one shot.
"Look at this one," he said. "What do you think that is--in the window on the right?"
The photograph was of the front of the house. Travis handed me back the phone and pointed to the window of a bedroom Harris used as a study. I thought I could see a tall shadow shaped like a man behind the open blinds.
I was speechless.
"Are you OK?" he asked. "We’re almost finished for today."
"I’m all right," I said. "What else do you need?"
"Just tell me again what happened in your own words, to make sure you’re not forgetting anything."
I started at the beginning, when I found the abandoned goose nest. Usually long-winded, I was choking up with tension and tried to keep it short and sweet so, rather than hours later, I wrapped it up in just under an hour.
"Do you want some more coffee?"
"No. Thanks." I didn’t tell him that I just wanted to leave, to be by myself.
"What do you think happened to the goose? You said you didn’t think the fox could have killed her."
I expressed the ideas that had been going round and round in my head since the night before.
"My first thought was that a dog had killed her and dragged her off, but if a dog had done it, I think there would’ve been more of a mess."
"So, what do you think happened?"
"I hate to say, but a person must have." I looked longingly at the door behind him. "Unfortunately, I can think of several, including Harris, who’d be happy to see the geese gone."
"If Harris harmed the goose, why do you think he was murdered?"
If Travis didn’t know how to stop a conversation dead in its tracks, I don’t know who did. Could he be thinking that Harris’s death was a result of the goose’s disappearance? Almost everyone in the community was upset about the goose, but most of my neighbors are nature lovers, peace-loving beings, not thugs who would seek vengeance. They plant gardens with flowers for bees and birds. They erect boxes for bluebirds to nest and raise families in. If they do any Oriental arts, they study Tai Chi and Yoga not Muay Thai kick boxing or Brazilian jujitsu. They don’t even watch mixed martial arts events on TV. The most violence they see is on the news or Masterpiece Theater. The only real excitement comes at the annual HOA meeting the board suggests raising the annual fees or banning fishing in the ponds.
"He wasn’t killed because of the goose?" I conjectured. My mind was racing. Travis just looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
What else could I say about Harris? "He wasn’t flashy and had few people over to his house. No loud parties or music. He went to work every day at the School of Agriculture where taught biochemistry. He was always neatly dressed, usually in a plain, button-down shirt and khakis. No jeans or shorts. His appearance was ordinary, in the extreme. Harris wasn’t the sort I’d imagined would be killed for any reason."
Travis looked over his notes and jotted down a few more.
"Anything you want to ask me?"
Unable to think of any question other than "Can I go now," I shook my head.
"Last question, why haven’t you told me that you’re a forensic sketch artist for the Athens PD?" He showed me the Post-It, stuck to the front of the file, which stated this.
"Personal reasons," I snapped. He looked as if he was trying to think of a way to broach this new topic but finally gave up.
"All right. That’s it for now. I doubt anyone was still at the house by the time you got there, but be careful; and, if you get worried about anything, just call me. I’ll be at the police station while we sort this out. OK?"
I stood up to leave. Travis held out his hand. For a moment I thought he wanted to shake my hand. "The phone?" he asked.
I reluctantly passed it over to him. I was hoping there wouldn’t be any more surprises in the pictures. We said our good-byes, and I drove straight to a drugstore to buy a Go-Phone, in case I needed 9-1-1 tonight.